Nineteenth Ce ntury The Magazine of the Victorian Society in America Volume 37 Number 1 Nineteenth Century hhh THE MAGAZINE OF THE VICTORIAN SOCIETY IN AMERICA VOLuMe 37 • NuMBer 1 SPRING 2017 Editor Contents Warren Ashworth Consulting Editor Sara Chapman Bull’s Teakwood Rooms William Ayres A LOST LETTER REVEALS A CURIOUS COMMISSION Book Review Editor FOR LOCkwOOD DE FOREST 2 Karen Zukowski Roberta A. Mayer and Susan Condrick Managing Editor / Graphic Designer Wendy Midgett Frank Furness Printed by Official Offset Corp. PERPETUAL MOTION AND “THE CAPTAIN’S TROUSERS” 10 Amityville, New York Michael J. Lewis Committee on Publications Chair Warren Ashworth Hart’s Parish Churches William Ayres NOTES ON AN OVERLOOkED AUTHOR & ARCHITECT Anne-Taylor Cahill OF THE GOTHIC REVIVAL ERA 16 Christopher Forbes Sally Buchanan Kinsey John H. Carnahan and James F. O’Gorman Michael J. Lewis Barbara J. Mitnick Jaclyn Spainhour William Noland Karen Zukowski THE MAkING OF A VIRGINIA ARCHITECT 24 Christopher V. Novelli For information on The Victorian Society in America, contact the national office: 1636 Sansom Street Philadelphia, PA 19103 (215) 636-9872 Fax (215) 636-9873 [email protected] Departments www.victoriansociety.org 38 Preservation Diary THE REGILDING OF SAINT-GAUDENS’ DIANA Cynthia Haveson Veloric 42 The Bibliophilist 46 Editorial 49 Contributors Jo Anne Warren Richard Guy Wilson 47 Milestones Karen Zukowski A PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS Anne-Taylor Cahill Cover: Interior of richmond City Hall, richmond, Virginia. Library of Congress. Lockwood de Forest’s showroom at 9 East Seventeenth Street, New York, c. 1885. (Photo is reversed to show correct signature and date on painting seen in the overmantel). Published in de Forest’s Indian Domestic Architecture. Sara Chapman Bull’s Teakwood Rooms A LOST LETTER REVEALS A CURIOUS COMMISSION FOR LOCkwOOD DE FOREST Roberta A. Mayer and Susan Condrick On January 13, 1888, Lockwood de Forest sent Mrs. Ole Bull Church in Boston, he moved his office to the suburb of –Sara Chapman Bull (née Thorp) –a letter providing a rough Brookline. According to de Forest, Richardson was one of the estimate of $1,025.50 for hand-carved teakwood moldings, few professional architects who took an interest in his Indian brackets, panels, and a mantel, along with a preliminary woodwork. 6 sketch for the installation. 1 At that time, Sara was working The archival business records and ledgers for de Forest are with architect Arthur Little in designing a new Colonial incomplete, and until now no surviving commissions had been Revival house at 168 Brattle Street in Cambridge, found in Boston or its environs. Yet, we know that de Forest Massachusetts. De Forest was an artistic decorator and had many ties to the Boston area other than Richardson. The purveyor of “East Indian Furniture, Metal work, Carved Stone primary lease for the building at 9 East Seventeenth Street was & wood for Architectural Use.” 2 The recent discovery of this held by J. G. and J. F. Low Art Tile works, based in Chelsea, letter provides firm evidence of a previously unknown and Massachusetts, a northern suburb of Boston. 7 In New York, somewhat unusual commission for de Forest –the interiors of this firm used the ground floor for their showrooms. Their two adjacent Colonial Revival rooms that were intended to agent, Caryl Coleman, managed the New York branch and accommodate musical concerts, thought-provoking symposia, helped de Forest with publicity. 8 Coleman was also the New and still create a comfortable place for an intimate fireside chat. Together, these have always been known as the “teakwood rooms.” De Forest’s patrons were typically the elite of America’s Gilded Age. He began his professional decorating career in partnership with Louis C. Tiffany in the firm of Tiffany & De Forest. 3 After that business dissolved, de Forest operated independently at 9 East Seventeenth Street in New York City, a sublease of four rooms that began on May 1, 1883. Views of de Forest’s showrooms reveal the richly carved teakwood furnishings that were his specialty. Through the 1880s and thereafter, de Forest provided designs and materials for projects across the United States, and from the beginning, his clients were attracted to the exoticism these decorations displayed. Some of the most notable examples were the Tiffany family mansion at 27 East Seventy-Second Street in New York City, the home of painter Frederic Edwin Church in Hudson, New York, known as “Olana,” the San Francisco Nob Hill mansion of James Clair Flood, the Baltimore house of Elizabeth Mary Garrett, and the Chicago L to R: Interior of the Mary Garrett House, Baltimore, as published in Art and Archaeology , residences of the Potter Palmers and June 1925. Courtesy Hiram woodward. Teak side chair, designed by Lockwood de Forest (1850- Franklin MacVeagh. 4 1932), c. 1881 and purchased by Mary Garrett for her home in Baltimore. The Metropolitan De Forest worked on the MacVeagh Museum of Art. house in 1886, which was the last project of Henry Hobson York agent for the Smith & Anthony Stove Company of Richardson, one of the most prominent American architects of Boston, which manufactured de Forest’s designs for cast iron the day. 5 Richardson had been based in New York, but in 1878 fireplace linings (an example of which is visible in Garrett’s when he began the now famous Romanesque-Revival Trinity hearth). 9 3 In addition to his decorating network, de Forest had Ole Bull returned to America in January 1852, the same publishing ties to Boston. In 1885, the Heliotype Printing year that P. T. Barnum was promoting the concerts of the Company at 211 Tremont Street printed his first self-published “Swedish Nightingale,” Jenny Lind. 20 Again, he toured book, Indian Domestic Architecture .10 Then in 1887, the extensively, not returning to Europe until 1857. During this Boston firm of George H. Polley & Co. published de Forest’s period, he purchased 11,144 acres of wooded land near second book, titled Indian Architecture and Ornament . Years Coudersport, Pennsylvania, with the idealistic and somewhat later, in 1901, de Forest became a member of the Society of impulsive intent of founding a new colony for Norwegians. 21 Arts and Crafts in Boston. 11 About a decade after that, he wrote The venture included the planning of four communities –New articles for their magazine, Handicraft .12 Bergen, New Norway, Oleana, and Valhalla, where Ole Bull Despite the publicity, the professional architectural started to build a “castle” (which burned in 1923). In the end, community in Boston did not seem to be receptive to de the project was a failure, but it only added to Ole Bull’s Forest’s work. when Indian Domestic Architecture first personal mythology (today it is the site of Ole Bull State Park). appeared, the Boston-based American Architect and Building Ole Bull’s third trip to America was in 1867. He was then a News criticized de Forest’s taste as an impractical and dust- widower, his wife, Alexandrine Félicie Villeminot, having died in 1862. Although there were many return trips to Norway, this marked the last phase of his concert life, with the majority of his performances scheduled in the United States. He reconnected with his many American friends as well. 22 In March 1870, Ole Bull arrived for a concert in Madison, wisconsin, and was a guest of Joseph Gilbert Thorp, a wisconsin state senator whose livelihood came from a lumber business in Eau Claire. 23 At that time, Ole met Thorp’s daughter, Sara, and began to court her. Joseph Thorp had serious and understandable reservations about his daughter’s much older suitor, but Sara’s mother, [Susan] Amelia Chapman Thorp was eager to stoke the flames of romance. Sara was beautiful, charming, and musically talented, and Ole Bull was an enormously charismatic and available celebrity. In Amelia’s view, the matchmaking had the potential to bolster L to R: Sara Chapman Bull and her husband, Ole Bull. the family’s social status well beyond wisconsin. By June of that year, Ole and Sara were secretly wed; they were later collecting fad. The reviewer went on to suggest that de Forest publicly wed with great fanfare. In some circles, the “May- was taking advantage of cheap labor and that the stated aim of December” marriage was simply scandalous, and Joseph craft preservation was not convincing. 13 with the publication Thorp was not pleased. Several years of family quarrels of Indian Architecture and Ornament , another unenthusiastic ensued, even after Ole and Sara had a daughter. The internal review appeared in the American Architect and Building family discord was so unpleasant that Ole left for a time. News , with the continued assertion that Indian architecture when Ole and Sara were separated in the summer of 1872, did not belong in the United States. 14 he bought the Norwegian island of Lysøen and began working It is against this backdrop that we return to Lockwood de with architect Conrad Fredrik van de Lippe on a fanciful Forest and Mrs. Ole Bull. De Forest’s estimate for Sara was summerhouse that he called the “little Alhambra.” 24 drafted in 1888, as he was preparing to move his business to Completed in 1873, it was a remarkable blend of vernacular an exotic new townhouse at 7 East Tenth Street. This New Norwegian country architecture with an array of eclectic York City landmark would soon be known as the “most Indian Moorish details crafted in wood. The overall effect was much house in America.” 15 in the spirit of “Iranistan,” the mansion in Bridgeport, At that time, Sara was thirty-eight years old, and she had Connecticut, that P.